One of my fond­est mem­o­ries of watch­ing PBS back in the 70’s when I was but a lad was see­ing The Lathe of Heaven. It wasn’t really known to me at the time that the author was a Taoist at heart and that I would even­tu­ally become one as well (now that’s a pun for you!).

Regard­less, my task here is to take one of my per­sonal favorites to task. Of what sci­ence is the sci­ence fic­tion of this?

Let me first start by giv­ing some cre­dence to the author, Ursula K. LeGuin. Among sci­ence fic­tion authors, she is a giant. Not many of her nov­els have been turned into film or video, but this first effort became the most requested PBS show for re-airing. LeGuin is famous for the “Earth­sea” series, “The Left Hand of Dark­ness” and many oth­ers includ­ing her own inter­pre­ta­tion and telling of the “Tao Te Ching.”

She also politely acknowl­edges that the title was taken from a mis­trans­la­tion of the philo­soph­i­cal Taoist texts called the “Inner Chap­ters” by Chuang Tse; it’s a mis­trans­la­tion because there were no lathes in China at the time of the writ­ing of “Inner Chap­ters.” It read, “To let under­stand­ing stop at what can­not be under­stood is a high attain­ment. Those who can­not do it will be destroyed on the lathe of heaven.”

The major char­ac­ter­is­tics and char­ac­ters of the movie worth review­ing are: REALITY, MONSTERS and ALIENS.

REALISM GRADE > REALITY: A

It’s not often that real­ity itself is tack­led so directly in a film or story, but—just as it says in the Tao Te Ching open­ing stanzas—reality is cre­ated in words and words can be changed just as eas­ily as dreams change. In this real­ity, real­ity itself changes based on the dreams of the reluc­tant hero of this story…long before reluc­tant heroes became so commonplace.

The cen­tral char­ac­ter just wants to stop dream­ing because his dreams are pulling real­ity out from under himself…and he remem­bers the old real­ity as firmly as every­one lives the new real­ity. One night he dreamt his aunt had died and it was sim­ply a fact to every­one after he woke up that she had been dead for some time. Well, if you woke up and killed your aunt, then you might want to stop dream­ing as well!

Because he ended up tak­ing drugs to keep from dream­ing, he ended up with a dream spe­cial­ist to see if that would resolve the prob­lem. When the dream spe­cial­ist wit­nesses this reality-changing power, he keeps it to him­self and plays the main char­ac­ter, George Orr like a fid­dle so that even­tu­ally he ends up being the head of a well-funded, state-of-the-art dream research facility.

By try­ing to be con­struc­tive, the dream researcher instructs George to dream away racial prob­lems by dream­ing every­one is grey-skinned. Extreme rain and extreme heat are dreamed away into pleas­ant weather that every­one has been expe­ri­enc­ing for years.

But, of course, absolute power cor­rupts absolutely. Haber, the dream researcher, scares George away and soon George dreams of alien attacks. Haber tries to steal the power that George has away from him which “cures” him but leaves Haber in con­trol of reality…which he is unable to control.

Look­ing at this premise, as impos­si­ble as it sounds, it has an appeal to it. If any­one was ever a sucker for the idea that any­one can change the world then this is their movie. If only it were as easy as get­ting some shut-eye. I can tell you from my own expe­ri­ence that there have been times that I have taken a nap and the world wasn’t the place I thought it was, but it wasn’t because I changed real­ity; it was because I changed my view of it.

I give this an A.

REALISM GRADE > ALIENS: B

The aliens in this movie were largely big sculp­tures of some­thing akin to sea tur­tles that stand about six-feet-tall. They turn out to be very nice fel­lows who run antique shops or sell hot dogs. They are com­pletely inof­fen­sive or scary and hap­pen to be very, deeply wise.

How­ever, this movie was made on a shoe­string bud­get for PBS in 1980 and so the aliens didn’t really have any mov­ing parts. They get a B.

REALISM GRADE > MONSTERS: A

The only mon­ster in this movie was the antag­o­nist Haber. While I real­ize that he’s no dif­fer­ent than the pro­tag­o­nist, he has become a super-threat by tak­ing on pow­ers that stretch beyond super-powers like fly­ing, breath­ing fire or what­ever. He could dream away every dragon, every fire-arm, every per­son if he is able to dream the right dream. His motives aren’t pure but are very human. He is a mon­ster in the sense that he is the Franken­stein mon­ster of his own mak­ing. He is a Godzilla of his own design that can tear down build­ings in the blink­ing of a rapid-eye-movement. He is an unstop­pable force that even real­ity can­not defeat because he changes real­ity. The only way to defeat him is to keep him awake and undreaming.

His only fail­ing and his own demise came about because of his own human­ity. We don’t know if it was guilt or insan­ity or his own dreams that made him bound to a wheel­chair in some sort of state of demen­tia, but his own lim­its defeated himself.

REALISM GRADE > OVERALL: A

Again, though low bud­get (which has its own charms) with big plas­tic turtle-shaped aliens, this movie really rocked. There are great rea­sons it was the most-requested PBS movie to be re-aired.

The DVD qual­ity isn’t so hot because the orig­i­nal film was either miss­ing or was destroyed or dam­aged and so the DVD was made from a crappy video­taped ver­sion. But this is a gem to behold.

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